It Never Can Happen Again. William De Morgan

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СКАЧАТЬ Coupland. Is there something you wish I should say?"

      "Well, lady, yes! And be very thankful to ye! Would ye be so very kind as just say to her ... from her Daddy, ye know ... nothing at all about any sort of an ill-convenience come of this here accident. Just make it easy, like ... for she's but young, ye'll understand...."

      "Jim means ... I know, Jim"—for Jim seemed about to interrupt the Rev. Athelstan—"he means he wants Lizarann to think the accident a slight one."

      "Right you are, master!" Jim is much relieved, and his interpreter continues: "So he wants her to know as little as possible till he can walk about and make the least of it."

      "Oh yes! I quite understand that. I'll be very careful and discreet."

      "Not for to let on, anyways, about her Daddy being a fut the less!" Jim's relief is enormous at the completeness of the understanding.

      The conversation ran on, on such general lines as the diet of hospital life—highly approved of—the sanguineness of the head-surgeon that Jim would make a record in recovery, and the peculiarly small amount of inconvenience endured (if the truth were known) by the wearers of wooden legs. Jim was very cheerful about this. "Bob Steptoe, he'll lose a good half o' my custom," said he, immensely amused.

      At this moment an interruption occurred. A nurse who had passed through the room a few minutes before rather hurriedly was returning, with a slightly perplexed manner on her, as of one who had not found a thing sought for. At the same moment another, who seemed a superior functionary, came in from the opposite door, and they met and spoke together in an undertone. Both looked round towards Jim's bed.

      "I can ask him, anyhow!" said the senior nurse, and approached Athelstan Taylor. She spoke to him rapidly under her breath, but of what she said neither Jim nor the lady heard anything. When she had finished, he said, "Of course, certainly!" and then, turning to Lady Arkroyd, explained that a man who was dying in another part of the Hospital had asked to see a clergyman, and that an unusual conjunction of circumstances had made it difficult to comply with his request, which was urgent. He might die any moment, the nurse had said, and Mr. * * * was ill—he being, presumably, the usual resource in such cases. Mr. Taylor was sure Lady Arkroyd would excuse him. But it would be better for him to say good-bye provisionally, as no one could tell how long he might be detained. Her ladyship would no doubt stay and talk with Jim a little longer.

      Lady Arkroyd was not sorry to do so. She had not quite come up to her own standard of self-justification; having, indeed, a well-marked conviction of her capability of doing anything she turned her hands to, and certainly not least of affording consolation and help to the distressed. Without cataloguing the instances, she had an inner conviction of the existence of a class of persons who were sick, and she visited them. She was a good-natured woman enough, and really took sufficient pleasure in doing good on purpose, to make playing at Providence a luxury, or at least to prevent its ever becoming a bore. No wonder that on this occasion she felt a little damped, with nothing further to her score so far than an undertaking on her part to hold her tongue and be discreet, under specified circumstances.

      "The master's coming back—the gentleman?" says Jim, as the door closes on Mr. Taylor and the nurse.

      "Oh yes!—he'll come back to see you before he goes." Jim has to be satisfied with this. "You must try to keep quiet and be patient, Coupland, and then the healing will go on quicker...."

      "It ain't hardly impatience, lady." Jim pauses to think what it is. "Not so much as the want of a good stretch. I'd be all right if they'd take this here plaister off o' my right leg. It's a mighty thick plaister, anyhow." Jim's slight movement is terribly expressive of the irksomeness of his lot. The nurse in charge notes the fact, and contrives such alleviation as may be—an alteration in the angle of the couch, an adjustment of a pillow, a dose of some refreshing stimulant that seems not unwelcome. "He's not the trouble many are," says she. Jim seems a favourite.

      Lady Arkroyd, left to herself, casts about for something to say which shall neither be aggressively religious nor too cowardly a concession to Jim's heathenism, of which Mr. Taylor has spoken freely to her. After a few more words about collateral matter, especially about the Hospital's veto on smoking—a bitter privation—she thinks she sees her way.

      "It is very hard, Coupland, and one can't help saying so. Only, of course, it doesn't do to call the Wisdom of Providence in question...."

      "What might that be, missis—lady, I should say?" Now the fact is, Jim was not inquiring about the Wisdom of Providence—of which he had heard before from Mr. Wilkins—but about the meaning of "calling in question." The lady thought otherwise, mistakenly.

      "I only meant," she said, feeling very unsafe, "that we know—at least, we believe—that events are Divinely ordered for the best."

      "Ye know better than I do about that, lady," said Jim. And then Lady Arkroyd thought he was an Agnostic. He had really only paid tribute to her superior education. But it seemed to set him a-thinking, too! For he added, after a pause: "If they'd a' been ordered for the worst, maybe I might have had my barker-pipe." The word "Divinely" had not carried his mind outside the Hospital regulations. Poor Jim had not the remotest conception that he had shocked his lady visitor.

      Nevertheless, she was shocked, and felt the case called for an effort. But her own religious convictions—only she had been quite properly educated, mind you!—were few and vapid. Her proprietorship of a Prayer-Book, with a mark in the right place, nearly covered the whole ground. However, there was always the Rev. Athelstan; she could make him responsible, by indirect engineering, for any amount of belief, whatever her own unprofessional laxity might be. So she assumed a definitely religious air, and ignored Jim's unfortunate remark about the pipe.

      "I feel so sure, Coupland, that Mr. Taylor has told you, and will tell you more, about Where to look, in tribulation for...."

      "Sakes alive, Lady! Me look!..." Jim, who had interrupted, stopped suddenly, confused and perturbed at something. Her ladyship, interpreting this as some protest of Agnosticism, now felt her insufficiency to deal with the case, and only wished to transfer the conversation elsewhere. She felt she had done her duty, in what she would not have hesitated to mention in Society as "goody talk," when she executed that superb entrechat, so to speak, of the big initial W of "Where." She had done her duty, and had not succeeded. She would be quite justified now in relaxing from the exalted serenity, tempered with due humility, of a spiritual instructress, and referring to the minor consolations of this earth. She ignored Jim's exclamation, and continued speaking as though her last sentence had been completed.

      "Besides, in a very little while you will be able to have Eliza Ann back again, and really you'll be able to move about quite easily."

      Jim laughed out—a big hearty laugh of contempt for any mere personal mishap of his own. "I'll have the less weight to carry, sure!" he said. And then her ladyship looked at her watch, and asked the nurse whether that clock was right; who promptly replied that that clock was, if anything, slow. Seeing the good effect of which, she went on to say that it was slower still. However, this was not needed, for the visitor was only feeling about for departure, which, in view of the possible indefinite postponement of Mr. Taylor's return, was given up with insincere professions of regret on the part of both, and Lady Arkroyd took her leave, consolable, but with a noble sense of duty done.

      "The master be coming back, though, missis...?" Jim asks anxiously of the nurse.

      "Oh, yes, he's bound to come back, and you may make your mind easy."

      When Athelstan Taylor and the nurse left the ward, they passed through the avenue of beds СКАЧАТЬ